Hard to give this show anything above 1 star. The sound is very good, but the performance is lacklustre at best. Corgans voice is inconsistent and at times even lazy (he pulls off screams in one song, and barely tries to hit notes in others), there are sloppy performance errors here and there (most noticeable in Porcelina), the energy is uneven from song to song, and the band don't say a single word to the audience the entire performance.

It's one thing to say that the new mellow arrangements of songs, the absence of more obvious hits, and the timing of the show (just a few months after the conclusion of the mammoth MCIS tour), may have had something to do with the lacklustre set. But the trouble is that the band had just given an excellent and energetic performance 4 days earlier in Chicago, playing the exact same setlist (+ Muzzle). And that show was to a room of a couple hundred people, not the approximately 100,000+ crowd at Glastonbury, a venue which the Pumpkins had played a fantastic performance at in 1995, and where you would think that they would try and step-up the execution of their new set even more.

I have no idea whether or not there was a possible issue with the logistics of the show, whether Billy was unhappy that the band were playing in the daytime and given second billing beneath the Prodigy (the following night at Roskilde the Pumpkins would headline that festival and play at the 10:30pm slot, with the Prodigy given the leftover 1am slot), or whether the performance was merely the result of Corgan having taken his attempt at a "new" sound too far too soon, but the band's set is a disappointment, when it could've/should've been a triumphant return to the festival. If Billy was trying to come off gothic, new wave, or "dark", I don't think he succeeds here on any level. If anything, the song selection would suggest that the band was more interested in giving the crowd tracks from albums that were all recently released for sale (Eye from the Lost Highway soundtrack, The End is the Beginning is the End from the Batman soundtrack, and Transformer, from the Thirty-Three single, also featured in The Aeroplane Flies High boxset), than giving the audience songs that they could sing along to. Sure, the reworkings of the old songs could be interpreted as being a precursor to the playing style of the Adore era, but they could just as well be the result of burn-out from having played those same songs so many times on the MCIS tour.

There is a partial soundboard source, as well as video clips from the Glastonbury performance, but those are really nothing to write home about either. If anything, the blandness of the set sticks out even more when you see the visual. If you are interested in hearing this same setlist done well, check out the excellent audience recording of the Double Door show from 6/23/97, or the compilation of the audience and FM source of the night after Glastonbury, at the Roskilde Festival on 6/28/97 (talk about a night and day improvement). Again, roughly the same setlist that they would keep for the entire Summer tour of Europe, which only makes the lukewarm Glastonbury show stick out all the more. If looking for a better balance of reworked MCIS songs alongside some of the newer material, seek out the 12/5/97 Miami show opening for the Rolling Stones. The darkness and atmospheric pre-Adore style comes through, but there is still enough of the "old" Pumpkins in there, even with the reworkings.